


Touch (Here Waiting Patiently)

by luninosity



Series: The Epic Universe of Porn, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Trauma, and Love [11]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Past Abuse, Sexual Content, Unexpected Proposals, protective!Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James has an unexpected encounter with a person out of the past; emotional hurt/comfort, and sex in a storage closet, and a marriage proposal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch (Here Waiting Patiently)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Eve 6’s “Think Twice”: _think twice/ before you touch my girl…_
> 
> This is the end of the first story arc; if you like the porn and cuddles, you may wish to just stop here. I promise there're still eventual happy endings!--I wouldn't do that to the boys--but the _next_ story arc starts with Very Bad Things happening to James, followed by some very slow healing.

It was, Michael decided, a good party. Technically it was Marvel’s party, being hosted on the basis that all of their various cast and crew, agents and writers and casting directors and anyone even tangentially involved with the studio in any imaginable way, should get to know each other and become one large happy family. This theory might have been problematic—Michael could think of many ways in which the family metaphor might prove unfortunate—but there was also an open bar, and so for the most part this had kept the night going well.  
   
Well…mostly well. James had vanished several minutes ago to find them more drinks, leaving him alone with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, both of whom were probably wonderful company when sober but at the moment seemed far too prone to random giggling and vaguely obscene hand gestures. He’d been attempting to keep up, but he was fairly certain it would take several more martinis before he would be willing to giggle in public. James, of course, didn’t need the alcohol, but had been cheerfully drinking something disturbingly pink, anyway.  
   
He missed James. Chris and Tom just weren’t the same. If James came back, they could leave early and possibly spend the rest of the night, or technically the morning, in bed. He wouldn’t mind taking James to bed right now.  
   
“Please don’t say that out loud, we really don’t want to know...”  
   
“Yes, we do! Details! We demand details!”  
   
“No!” All right, no more martinis, then. Except for whatever James might come back with. But no more after that.  
   
“Not even one detail?”  
   
“ _No_ details.”  
   
“So…James gets to be on top, then?”  
   
Michael contemplated the drink in Chris’s hand, and whether the effect of pouring it over that blond head would be worth the required effort. Probably not.  
   
“I imagine the X-Men uniforms would be _awesome_ for role-playing. Almost as good as a giant hammer.”  
   
Then again, maybe Tom was the one who deserved baptism by gin, anyway.  
   
At which point James reappeared, uncharacteristically silent, at his elbow. Michael turned to look at him, surprised; James didn’t, quite, look back.  
   
“Weren’t you getting us drinks?”  
   
“Oh…” James glanced down at his hands, as if only just now registering their emptiness. “Sorry. I was—I must’ve left them back there. At the bar. I can go back—”  
   
Michael frowned at the hands. The left one was trembling, he realized, just a little. Not enough that anyone else would notice, probably. But he could tell. Abruptly, he found himself entirely sober.  
   
“James…are you all right?”  
   
“I’m—yes. I am. Did you want me to go back and—”  
   
“No.” He could hear it in that voice, too. The familiar Scottish fuzziness had somehow lost all its usual vitality, the ever-present audible smile drained away and left bleeding someplace between the other corner of the room and Michael’s side. And James looked at him, quickly, and then away, and Michael heard the suddenly too-loud thump of his own heartbeat, echoing around them despite all the hordes of glitteringly drunken people.  
   
“I want you to tell me what’s wrong. Please.” He put a hand on one solid shoulder, inches below his, and felt the tension radiating up through James’s suit jacket. Beside him, Chris and Tom exchanged a series of complex eyebrow signals, and then tactfully disappeared, leaving them alone.  
   
“I—” James leaned into the touch, just a tiny bit, but enough to offer hope. At least it hadn’t been something he’d done. He couldn’t think of what else might’ve happened, though, and the not knowing terrified him.  “Outside, maybe? Not in here?”  
   
“Of course.” He tried to carve a path for James through the throng, employing height and shoulders and his best menacing glare in order to do so. Most people moved out of his way, but their movement was still impeded by the fact that everyone wanted to say hello to James, who couldn’t look less than approachably friendly if he tried, and also by the need to keep touching James, in some way, at all times.  
   
The first time he’d had to let go, interrupted by the random pressures of the high-powered crowd, he’d stopped in place, waited for James to extract himself from the smiles of a very familiar knightly face, and then brushed his fingers against one slim wrist and felt James shaking, and mentally sworn that he wouldn’t let them get separated again. It hadn’t entirely worked, but he’d been more successful than not, after that.  
   
Eventually, they fell out into the hallway, a welcomingly quieter expanse of worn carpet and repainted walls; he looked down at blue eyes, and tugged James around corners, away from the noise, until they ended up in a deserted room that seemed to be peacefully stockpiling extra tables and chairs against possible future shortages.  
   
James leaned against the faded wall, and smiled, a little. “You’re trying to make me feel better with hotel furniture?”  
   
“If hotel furniture will make you feel better, then yes.” That earned a slightly larger smile. “Tell me what happened. Please.”  
   
“I just…” James studied the carpet, eyes following intertwining patterns of gold leaves and pink flowers. “This is terribly ugly, you know…I mean the carpet, not anything else…”  
   
“I know.”  
   
“So…there are a lot of people here…some people I’ve not seen in years…so I ran into one of them, or I suppose he ran into me. At the bar. The person who—that person. I told you.” James stared at the closest pink flower as if it might leap up, out of the carpet, and lunge for his throat. It didn’t move.  
   
Michael couldn’t quite move, either. All the air had vanished from the room; he felt as if someone had just punched him, hard, in the gut. _That_ person.  
   
He’d thought James was all right. He _knew_ that James was all right. James had said that he was all right, that it’d happened years ago, that the absolute worst _hadn't_ happened, because James could take care of himself and, apparently, could also kick very hard when feeling threatened. But James had also said knives and had mentioned sharp objects and had felt afraid, in the bedroom, and those were thoughts that Michael had never wanted him to have, ever, ever again.  
   
“What happened? Are you—did he—who is it? Tell me.” James never had given him a name. Probably concerned that Michael would go do something stupid, such as hunt said person down, which was in fact the loudest violently shouting impulse in his head right now.  
   
James, possibly hearing all the mental shouting, or reading it on his face, looked up from the staring contest with the improbable flora, and sighed. “No. It’s not anyone you know, and nothing happened, really, and it’s not worth you doing whatever it is you’re thinking about doing. And…I’d rather you stayed here. With me. And the terrible carpet. If you don’t mind.”  
   
“Of course I don’t—can I hold you? Do you want—?”  
   
“Please,” James said, and let Michael put both arms around him, trying to offer warmth and strength and love and normality, anything that James might want or need. The neatly stacked chairs, surrounding them, made a quiet fortress, too, a supportive bulwark against the outside world, hideous upholstery and all.  
   
“Can you at least tell me what did happen? Also, your hands are cold.”  
   
“Sorry. I can move them—”  
   
“No.”  
   
“If you say so. And it wasn’t…I don’t know why I’m—it wasn’t anything important, and I’m overreacting, I know, this is stupid, I’m fine and you’re here and I should—”  
   
“I love you.”  
   
“…oh. Oh. I love you, too. Of course. Always.” James actually relaxed, just a tiny bit, leaning against him. Good. Not enough, not yet, but better. Michael held him as tightly as he thought might be safe, and felt a warm curl of hair slide along his face as James settled into his arms.  
   
“All right, well…he said hello. And I didn’t—I knew the voice was familiar, but then I turned around, and he knew as soon as I knew, and he smiled at me. Said I looked good, these days. That I—no, you don’t want to know, it’s _not_ important, really—”  
   
“James.”  
   
“Um. That I looked…well-owned. Satisfied. That he always knew I just needed to be someone’s… property. And then he laughed. And congratulated me. And walked away.”  
   
Michael felt himself practically shaking now, with anger. With sheer protective rage, pounding through every sinew and every vein and every muscle that ached to go out and hurt someone, _that_ someone, the someone who had made James glance away from him, with that look in those painfully blue eyes.  
   
“You—”  
   
“You…want to know everything, right? One more thing. It might’ve been an accident. Maybe. It felt like—”  
   
“He _touched_ you?” He might actually have to commit murder. At the moment, he thought he could. But James slid cold hands up under his shirt and held him there, keeping the two of them together, breathing falling slowly into unison, in the empty room with the flowery carpet and overstuffed and watchful chairs.  
   
“Yes. No. Like I said, it might not’ve been on purpose. When he walked away. I just felt the touch, I didn’t see—”  
   
“Where?”  
   
James hesitated, and then reached over, and picked up Michael’s closest hand in one of his. Laced their fingers together. Moved them over to his hip, then lower. Squeezed. And then looked up, meeting Michael’s outraged gaze with his own, for the first time, and Michael felt his heart contract, sharply, at the sight, because James was trying to smile at him, for him, through eyes like wounded oceans, tides drifting under makeshift bandages made of sunlight.  
   
“James,” he said, helplessly, desperate, “what can I do? Please tell me what you need me to do.” Something. Anything. Anything at all.  
   
But James smiled at him again at that, the sunlight shining out more clearly over the water, and then actually leaned up, on tiptoes because James would always be the shorter one of the two of them, and kissed him, softly but intently, as if the touch of their lips together at that second might be the most important piece of the entire world.  
   
Michael kissed him back, amazed, hesitant, wondering, and James ran his tongue along Michael’s lower lip and pulled him in closer, hands tracing their no longer chilly way up his back, beneath his shirt. And then paused to say, “You taste fantastic. Like martinis. And chapstick. And I love you.”  
   
“You—I love you, too—are you sure you want—” He couldn’t finish the sentence; James had started nibbling his ear, and the hands were busy doing very interesting things to his pants.  
   
“I want you to kiss me. And tell me you love me. I want to feel you. So that I can—because I _am_ yours, you know. Not your property, and you don’t own me—” James had, obviously, anticipated Michael’s protest before he’d quite managed to voice it “—but yours, anyway. Not his. Yours because I want to be. Because I want you. All right?”  
   
“All right,” Michael whispered back, and then, “I love you so fucking much, James, you know that,” and then pushed him up against the wall and kissed him, hard, nudging long legs apart with his own and then fitting himself between them, until James gasped and arched his back, hard evidence of all that want pressing against Michael’s thigh, and he grinned and shifted positions slightly, so that those feet barely touched the floor, just enough for balance, and James moaned, hips rocking forward against the pressure.  
   
“Good?”  
   
“I can’t—if you do that again I’m going to—”  
   
“Not yet, you’re not.” He pushed James up a little higher, hands holding shaking hips in place as he kept them balanced there, heat and neediness pinned against his thigh, toes barely brushing the terrible carpet, and he saw the eyes open impossibly wide, fingers tightening around his arms with the effort.  
   
“Please—”  
   
“You really want me to make you ruin this suit? Because I’d be happy to. But then we can’t go back outside.”  
   
“Oh, fuck—do that again—did you really think I was planning to go back outside, anyway? I was hoping to find us a hotel room and tie you to the bed—”  
   
“Me?”  
   
“Figuratively speaking—mmm—also I very much don’t care about this suit, I love you, now _please_ —”  
   
“I just thought you might want to go be social again, after this, because—”  
   
“What? Why would I—”  
   
“Well, you might want to tell people about me asking you to marry me.” He held his breath. Watched the words penetrate through the haze of desire, after a second.  
   
“You— _what?_ ”  
   
“You could sound a little less surprised!” Actually, he kind of wanted to laugh, at James’s expression, caught between absolute astonishment and burning want.  
   
“Say that again!”  
   
“Sorry, did you not hear me? Was I distracting you?” James tried to smack him on the shoulder, and couldn’t quite manage the change in position without losing already-precarious balance, and Michael moved one of his hands to wrap around James’s cock, stroking through the thin fabric of expensive suit pants, and observed the resultant moans with satisfaction.  
   
“For the record, I did have more elaborate plans for this moment. I thought about asking you after we finished shooting, at the wrap party—”  
   
“That was weeks ago!”  
   
“James, I’ve had the rings in my sock drawer for _months_.”  
   
“You never said anything!”  
   
“I wanted it to be perfect!”  
   
“So you decided to ask me _now_?” James said, and then started laughing, and pulled him in more closely, for another kiss, deep and warm and tingling with all that amusement, igniting fires of complete happiness all the way through his bones. The horrible furniture, silently towering in the background, looked on gleefully.  
   
Michael stopped kissing him long enough to find an answer, because he did have one, even if he hadn’t planned it, hadn’t thought of it until now. “Now is perfect. You’re perfect. Always. I love you always. I would—I’d do anything for you, I’ll hold you whenever you need me to and I’d rescue you forever if I could and I love the way you laugh, and the way you’re looking at me right now, that look, and you say you’re mine and I love that too, I do, but I’m yours, also, you know that, always. And also please say yes now.”  
   
“You,” James said, still laughing, but Michael could see the edge of suspicious brightness in those ocean-shaded eyes, shine that wasn’t just a reflection of the artificial overhead lights, “yes, of course, I love you, and this _is_ perfect, and you’re perfect, and _yes_!”  
   
“Oh thank god.” He probably sounded too relieved, because James laughed again. So he tightened the hand around James’s cock, and got a shiver in response. “So can I ruin your suit, then?”  
   
“Fuck the suit,” James said promptly, “I get to marry you,” and then snuck one very talented hand into Michael’s pants in retribution, and Michael held onto the last shreds of his self-control long enough to lean forward and whisper into James’s ear, “I want you to come for me _right now_ ,” and felt James, still pinned in place between the heat of his thigh and the cool support of the wall, gasp and come apart for him, around him, shaking and beautiful and perfect. And Michael heard himself groan, hips thrusting forward into those welcoming fingers, as he followed.  
   
After a long ecstatic minute, he felt James smile, against his shoulder. “So…you didn’t plan on keeping your suit, either?”  
   
Michael grinned back. “Well, I’ve never liked these pants. Though I might like them more now.”  
   
“I definitely like them. I like you. I like you asking me to marry you.”  
   
“I’m just glad you finally said yes.”  
   
“Oh, as if I’d say no. Honestly, you didn’t really have any doubt, did you? Also, I think I feel…sticky. Did we say hotel room?”  
   
“James?”  
   
“Hmm?”  
   
“You—are those—you’re not crying, are you?” He’d felt the brush of wetness along his cheek, when James had blinked.  
   
“I’m…not?”  
   
“Yes, you are. Why are you crying?”  
   
James lifted his head. Looked right at him. Smiled, when Michael reached over with a fingertip and collected a tiny bit of dampness from one cheekbone, where it had been highlighting a single decorative freckle. Not real tears, he thought. Just the suggestion of them, just enough to spark glimmers of brilliance all the way up from the depths of those deep-water oceans.  
   
James reached up, too, and took his hand. Said, very quietly, “I’m just happy.” And the words rested in the air of the storage room, curling up against bare skin and worn-out chair cushions and ruined suits, with the serene contentment of unquestionable truth.  
   
“I love you,” Michael told him, in answer, because that was true, too. And James smiled again, and said the words right back, in equally unquestionable reply.


End file.
